Hopeful Homes (Matthew 25:31-36)

While I visited Honduras, ITM ministries arranged a JLC Homes of Hope Foundation home build, even though a visiting group was not there to do it, which allowed me to watch part of the process and get some pictures of a newly minted home. Building homes within the community began in 2020 in memory of John Luke Carver, a young boy who died before his family was able to visit the ministry as planned, and the foundation provides homes for families with great need in the community. I saw tat there is no lack of great need in the community, and 206 families are currently on a wait list to have a home built. Just in the next few weeks, as two groups come down to provide labor several more homes will go up making today's total to date 64 homes, with wood already purchased for 10 more builds before rainy season begins.

Before a home can be built for a family, there must obviously be people willing and able to do the building, which requires an average of 20 people per build and 5-6 hours of time invested. In addition, the family they are building for must first apply and go through a process to determine that they have need as well as be able to actually prove they own the piece of land that the home will be built upon, which is often the most difficult part of the process. 

  

I asked to go inside to get a picture of the floor of the home during the build. Broken concrete pieces, rocks, dirt, and even broken glass, which I stepped gingerly over, lie on the floor of this new home (see pic above right with shovels and boards on ground inside house). All the families are given the choice of a wood floor OR the wood that would be used in the home for adding on a porch or another room or some other purpose that would suit the new owners. Many people choose the wood to add valuable space (such as a kitchen lean-to or porch area) and often either leave the floor as dirt, or if they are able, they might choose to pour some type of concrete floor at a later date.

The urgency for these homes is great and the cost relatively low to supply them with a new home and groceries, $2,156.00. Most people move in the day the homes are built. Having a place to call home, however humble the reality of a 16 x 16 x 9 foot home is, trumps the comfort of a truly “finished” home. I sit in my rectangular living room that I often think of as smaller (based on my last two homes, what luxury, right?) and realize that these homes will almost fit inside my “small” living room. I also have the luxury of separation of space that many of these won’t have unless they use the wood that would have been the floor to build tiny partitions inside the home, not to mention indoor plumbing, which we take for granted, and an indoor kitchen area with a stove. I was invited into one such home and saw the two tiny bedrooms built and the one narrow room left for living and eating and being together out of the worst of the elements. It is a bit earth shaking to step inside someone’s neat home and realize the luxuries of the life you’ve been given. And they take great care of these homes, as our unannounced visit shows. There was no hesitation to invite us inside.

As I was shown one tiny bedroom, I looked up and saw the afternoon light peeking through the necessary ventilation space left between the roof and the top plank of the house (see pic above right), and I wondered at what the reality looks like when rainy season arrives there, as currently it is summer and very hot and dry. Will the wind blow rain through that small space onto the small children sleeping in that bed? All the mosquitoes feel quite free to come inside and visit, thus the valued mosquito netting covering the bed of the younger ones. Two adults and three children of various ages share this small square of a house. That is reality. Yet the reality also is that this is a luxury so many more don’t have as they depend upon relatives for shelter, so many bodies pooling resources to be able to survive. Many are forced to sleep even on porches of relatives, and I cannot imagine anyone sleeping in some of the tin lean-tos I saw in our travels around the community and the greater area.

   

Many of the people of the La Ermita community work at a HUGE local tobacco farm, which I was reluctantly granted access to for some photographs with the understanding that the person with me was “responsible” for me and my actions inside and that under no circumstances was I to take a picture of any people found on the premises (thank you Jocelin and Kim for being willing to take me inside). My understanding is that the wages are almost equivalent to $7/day worked. The labor is hard, backbreaking even, and there are no sick days because if one takes too many days off, there will be no job to return to. 

Little opportunity for work means poverty and little opportunity to change their situations. Taxi driving is an option that I am not sure pays much better. The very fortunate have restaurants or businesses, but they are a tiny minority in this place. Many make things to sell, primarily food, and hawk their wares out of tiny metal or wood huts they must rent on the side of the main road. Others stand in the road between rushing lanes of traffic (usually near the myriad very tall speed-bumps that are designed to make people slow down in populated areas), and they hold up bags of fruit they have managed to grow (a feat itself in this dry area) or candy or tortillas or some other product they have made laboring over an open fire or cockpit or outdoor oven. Just standing in the road is a danger—I saw one young woman hanging onto the driver's side of an 18-wheeler while the man drove it down the road to avoid stopping traffic completely while finding the correct amount of money to buy a bag of lemons (which are green BTW--bizarre I know!).

Honestly, I saw no lazy people. In every circumstance, I saw people just like us making the best of situations they have absolutely no control over, people in great need. Honestly, I don't know how they do what they do as the heat saps the life out of you very quickly. They rest a minute, and then they go back to work because work is necessary for life. 

I saw people who are desperate for Jesus and realize it. I saw others who are desperate for Jesus and have no clue. They are all loved. They are all served. They are all valuable, not only in God’s eyes but in the eyes of the ITM ministry, which is comprised not just of Kim and Jessica and Misa but also many La Ermita locals whom they employ to be able to continue doing what they do. This is also a blessing to the community. Jobs are hard to come by, and there is value in working and earning wages to help support family. The Lord has used ITM to bring life to La Ermita, to bring hope to a pretty dreary place (at least during this time of year when the heat has burned most vegetation down and the humidity lingers and the dust and smoke sits visibly on top of it). 

Nelson (a local blessing who has a cattle farm and owns a hardware store in La Ermita and who, along with his wife Jocelin, has been of great assistance in helping Kim keep her ministry going with necessary supplies and equipment) asked me more than once during the week, as we went to the store for a new faucet for the feeding kitchen or odds and ends and errands, how I liked his country. He was expecting me to say it was ugly and related that many gringos cannot wait to get back home once they arrive. I told him I thought his country was beautiful. It is beautiful even in the midst of the end of dry season. 

I was asked repeatedly what I liked most about my visit. I replied it is the people, their contagious joy, their beautiful smiles, their welcoming natures. I was drawn to this place, and honestly, this week I have missed it. I will go back in a heartbeat when I have the opportunity again. I hope you will make a visit if you're able. Visiting a poverty-stricken country, meeting its people, seeing how they live, walking in their homes, hugging them, worshiping with them, opening the Word together, knowing the same Spirit is at work in them as in you, sharing meals with them (by the way, the food is simple but amazing), just doing life with them changes a person, especially an American like me who has more than enough and often forgets. 

Go if you can. Give if you can’t. Pray either way that this ministry bringing life and hope to Honduras, living In the Midst, will thrive and bring glory to God.

Why go?

I cannot help but think of the verses in Matthew 25:31-46 as Jesus relates what it means to serve and follow Him. His disciples were a bit confused, but He clarifies their confusion by telling them that the service they give in His name to even the "least of these" is equal to service done to Him for His glory. Here are the verses in context:

31  "But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. 32 "All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from oneanother, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;
33 and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left. 34 "Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 'For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gaveMe something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; 36 naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.' 37 "Then the righteous will answer Him, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feedYou, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? 38 'And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? 39 'When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?' 40 "The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent * that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.' 41 "Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; 43 I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.' 44 "Then they themselves also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, orthirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?' 45 "Then He will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent * that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.' 46 "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

For more information about this ministry, here is a link to their website: https://www.inthemidsthonduras.org/jlc-homes-of-hope.html

After visiting La Ermita, I can actually understand the great number of people on the list for homes in such a relatively small community. It is hard to imagine the spaces these small houses are wedged into without actually being on the ground in La Ermita, and the home they built the Friday sat in a tiny triangular corner just a few feet from the dirt road on its right and terribly close from the main highway through La Ermita, which is really above them because of the very steep embankment behind the house that rises to the road. It is not a quiet place, nor is it ideal, the front door of the house being less than ten feet from the neighbor, but it is home.